Chapter Text
For his twentieth birthday, Nijimura Shuuzou received: a Grumpy Cat mug, a jersey from his favorite basketball team (the Tokyo Cinq Reves, lousy season, but he couldn’t shake the hometown pride), two bags of almost-expensive imported coffee beans, and the position of head of a mafia gang and all the trappings and responsibilities there involved.
He would have preferred the gifts had ended at the coffee. He didn’t really want to try the kind that cats shit out, and anyway, it wasn’t like he’d be awake enough in the morning to taste it in the first place. As it turned out, though, when you were the oldest son of the estranged (and chronically hospitalized) heir to the largest yakuza syndicate in Japan, what you wanted didn’t have seem to have much to do with anything anymore.
In retrospect, he shouldn’t have been surprised. The day started off bad, with an early morning visit to the hospital just in time for the doctor to tell him that his dad’s condition was deteriorating more quickly than expected and the necessary treatment would be both risky and expensive. Extremely expensive. He and his mom did their best, but they’d been pouring money into treatments for the better part of five years, and his dad insisted he make it through university at least long enough to get his Bachelor’s. A part time job didn’t pay much – not nearly enough even with a partial scholarship, and his mom’s salary was already going to feeding and clothing three kids.
So, happy birthday to him. He should’ve expected the day to only get worse from there.
Classes were a blur. He remembered, vaguely, taking notes, but he had no idea what he’d written down or what had been on the board. The chatter of the lecture around him was white, buzzing noise, the scrape of chalk across slate, shuffling papers, the scratch of pens. His economics professor tried to catch his eye on the way out of the classroom, but he ducked his head and pretended he hadn’t seen. He knew it would just be a question about how things were going, this kind of distraction wasn’t like Nijimura-kun who usually worked so hard, was there anything that could be done to help? He wasn’t in the mood.
He was even less in the mood for his friends to be waiting for him outside his tiny apartment with smiles and gifts and a case of Asahi Dry – but it’d only end up worse to put them off and have them asking questions, being solicitous and concerned, looking at him like this was anything more than what he should do when it was his family.
In the end, he grit his teeth until his mouth was curved in something like a smile, invited them all in, and laughed like his head wasn’t pounding, like he wasn’t dying to lie down and snatch a nap before he headed to his evening shift at the local 7-Eleven. He joked his way through the cake and presents, made a face on cue to match the cat’s cranky stare on the mug, and managed a credible exchange of insults when Hayama handed over the coffee and started in on how Kobe Bryant was past age and over hyped.
They were still at it on Shuuzou’s couch and crowded around his cheap TV set, arguing over a ref’s bad call, when he left an hour later. The swampy June heat was still less sweltering than the inside of his apartment had been; the walk to the konbini should have given him time to clear his head.
Instead, he just felt hotter, dizzy, like he was caught up in some mad fun house ride, swept in a whirl by centrifugal force, the doctor’s words echoing around and around in his head.
He was still trying to figure out where they’d get the money. Nowhere, was all he kept coming up with. They didn’t have any family they could ask, and a loan was out of the question. Nowhere, nowhere. His head was a blank. He must have passed people on the street, but he didn’t see them. The walk of ten blocks passed in a blur. Once, he almost stepped into traffic, was only saved by someone’s arm flung across his chest. He mumbled a thanks and kept walking when the light changed, dazed. Nowhere, nowhere. There was nowhere.
It was almost a surprise to arrive at the store, and stepping into the cool, air-conditioned interior felt like a shock of ice water down his spine. He sucked in a breath and let the cold dry the sweat on his face. It was enough of a jolt that he could stop thinking for a moment, long enough to smile at Haruna-san behind the counter without it being too strained. She smiled back at him, waved, and went back to scanning a teenager’s assorted snacks without a second glance, so he must have managed close enough to normal.
Stocking shelves was mindless, but at least it was something that kept him moving, made him pay just enough attention to label the bags of chips the right prices and push them into neat rows, foil packets crinkling as the old bags got shoved to the back. He settled into a rhythm, pick a bag out of the shipping carton, stick the price tag on, drop it on the shelf and go on for the next one. He had to concentrate enough that the endless loop of rapid deterioration and muscular dystrophy was only a vague echo at the edge of his hearing, mostly drowned out by the chirp of Haruna-san’s voice as she rang out another customer.
It was nice to stop thinking for a little while, even if he didn’t manage it entirely. The repetitive motion helped. From time to time, the chime over the door would ring as customers came in and out, letting in waves of the warm, sticky air.
He only noticed the man in the suit because he was used to watching out for that kind of thing. Haruna-san was three years younger than him and very pretty. Creeps liked to come in and try to chat her up all the time, and Shuuzou’d made it a habit to get rid of them before any of them could push things too far. This creep was hardly noticeable except for the way his suit hung a little too big on his frame, ugly in how it was cheap in that tacky sort of way that happened when you were trying for expensive without any of the actual cost.
The man stepped inside and looked around for just a little too long, like he was searching for someone. It was exactly the kind of thing the creeps did before they arrowed in on Haruna-san, and Shuuzou sighed and prepared to drop his price gun so he could go introduce his fist to the guy’s face if a little friendly persuasion didn’t do the job.
Amazingly, considering the crappy day Shuuzou’d been having, the man left to browse the magazine racks at the back of the store after only a minute of the kind of awkward flirting that made Haruna-san’s mouth go tense and tight in a straight, uncomfortable line. Shuuzou kept an eye on the man, but he didn’t even glance at Haruna-san again after that, just kept his face hidden behind a copy of something with a bikini-clad idol beaming out from the front.
The man was still there when Shuuzou’s shift ended, but a guy browsing was harmless enough, and Haruna-san carried Mace in her purse. Shuuzou thought about staying, but before he could make the offer, she waved him off. The man was gone when Shuuzou came back from the break room with his jacket and bag, so he didn’t give it a second thought.
He was unfocused enough that he couldn't help but start thinking about the treatment again, anyway. Shuuzou could almost smell the antiseptic tang of the hospital hanging in the air around him, getting up his nose. It was probably clinging to his coat; he’d have to wash it when he got home. When he got home, he should call his mom, maybe see if his kid brothers were still awake. She might not have told them about Dad yet, but it’d been a while since he’d seen them. He could talk to them and try to forget for the night how they didn’t have the money. How they had no way to get it no matter what Shuuzou thought to try.
He was so distracted that he ran right into the guy lurking outside the doorway of the 7-Eleven and sent both of them stumbling. His elbow banged into the door as it swung shut, and he bit back a curse. Maybe the guy hadn’t been lurking, Shuuzou hadn’t really been paying enough attention to notice. Guys in immaculately fitted suits and shiny leather shoes probably didn’t lurk anywhere. It was probably just called dallying or something when it was some big shot like that.
“Sorry,” he muttered, and looked away from the clean lines of the suit to see if he’d made the guy drop anything. His scuffed sneakers, dusty from the backroom that never really got cleaned, looked even older than they were next to the gleaming sheen of the black Oxfords peeking out from under the guy’s pants leg. Shuuzou forced himself not to scowl as he looked back up at the stranger, who had yet to step out of the doorway, or even so much as move from where he’d been pushed after the collision.
It wasn’t a stranger at all.
Mibuchi Reo was staring back at him – smiling back at him, placid and unsurprised and just barely, faintly amused. It was the same smile Shuuzou saw every day in his Accounting 101 class, in the gym where they worked out together, on the street court where they played basketball on weekends when they had the time to spare. The same smile he’d seen when Mibuchi had sat down beside him on the first day of school in first year and asked to borrow a pencil because one of his friends had said the professor liked to give pop quizzes and he’d only brought pens. Shuuzou’d been grateful for the warning. Happy to make a friend.
He’d never seen Mibuchi looking like this, though, buttoned up, tucked in, and polished, hair falling around his face, like he would never wear, let alone own, the worn-soft hoodies and skinny jeans with faded knees Shuuzou saw him in every day. This Mibuchi, with his glossy shoes and glinting cufflinks and a waistcoat buttoned over his pressed white shirt, was as foreign as the gun held sure and steady in his hand.
“What the hell is going on,” Shuuzou started to say, and a car pulled up to the curve, black and sleek and gleaming, and the windows all tinted too dark inside to see.
“Sorry about this, Nijimura-san,” Mibuchi said. Mibuchi’d never called Shuuzou anything but Shuu-chan in his life. “But I need you to get in the car, now.”
Even though Mibuchi stepped away to open the door onto the plush leather interior of the car, the gun didn’t waver from its spot aimed dead center at Shuuzou’s chest. Behind him, there was a crash from inside the store, like someone had knocked over one of the displays. Haruna-san’s voice rose in a startled yelp.
“Now, please,” Mibuchi said pleasantly. Something clicked in the gun as he moved a finger; the safety, just like on TV, Shuuzou thought distantly, with the part of his mind that wasn’t waiting for him to wake up, slumped over his desk and drooling on his text book. “We don’t have much time.”
He beckoned with the tip of the gun, and another crash sounded back in the store with the tinkling of shattering glass. In the mirrored surface of the car’s window, Shuuzou saw the man in the tacky suit sail over the counter as Haruna-san ducked out of the way. Hayama was standing with his fist raised and his usual cocky grin in place. There was another gun in his other hand.
Shuuzou didn’t bother hiding the scowl this time; he shoved past Mibuchi and got into the car.
---
Finally, Shuuzou blew out a long breath and slumped back in the seat. The leather creaked softly beneath him, counterpoint to the low purr of the engine and Mibuchi’s even breaths.
“You know I’m not worth any ransom or shit like that,” he said to the felted roof. The idea that this was a kidnapping for money, when Mibuchi had seen Shuuzou scraping to come up with enough for the semester’s texts, had babysat one of his kid brothers while he was at his job one afternoon, was patently ridiculous, but what else could it be? His parents were (had been) middle class salary workers. He was a broke college student. Stories like his were a dime a dozen in Tokyo. They were ordinary and unremarkable except for the jagged line of their own personal family tragedy, and that would hardly matter to anyone else.
Mibuchi shifted in his seat and Shuuzou looked over at him; the gun lowered and was slid into a holster buckled across Mibuchi’s shoulder that Shuuzou hadn’t noticed before. He thought, for a second, about lunging for Mibuchi, slamming his fist into the bridge of Mibuchi’s nose and feeling the satisfying crack as bone gave way, the warm slickness of blood. His fingers curled into a fist and his arm tensed. The urge didn’t pass, but he took a deep breath and forced his hand to uncurl.
“Shuu-chan,” Mibuchi said. Shuuzou snorted and couldn’t quite hold back the disdainful sneer. “Nijimura-san,” Mibuchi said instead. “This isn’t a kidnapping.” He paused and tilted his head, gave Shuuzou a wry smile, almost apologetic. “Well, not like that. It’s for your own safety.”
“My own safety,” Shuuzou repeated flatly. The car slowed and made a turn. They were entering a residential district, but Shuuzou hadn’t been paying enough attention to know where. Outside, the streetlights flickered orange over the trees lining the road, bowed and heavy with summer leaves.
“That man was there to kill you,” Mibuchi said, and Shuuzou remembered the tacky suit, how he hadn’t, after that first brief attempt, spared Haruna-san a second glance.
“And you took care of him,” Shuuzou said tonelessly. “You and Hayama.” Hayama, who’d come up to Shuuzou one day chattering about the Cinq Reves shirt Shuuzou had on and had just kept coming back day after day, who’d reminded Shuuzou a little of one of his brothers. He wondered, distantly, if Hayama even liked the Cinq Reves at all.
“And Nebuya,” Mibuchi said easily, like it wasn’t making the bottom drop out of Shuuzou’s stomach with a sick lurch. “He was around the back in case more of them tried to come in.”
The car pulled into a driveway while Shuuzou sat and tried not to be sick, tried not to wonder what other friendships were going to turn into a lie. Why they’d even bothered with him in the first place. Mibuchi got out and came around to his side, pulled the door open, and held it for him. Shuuzou got out numbly. They were at an apartment building, all dark glass and modern lines. Shuuzou couldn’t have afforded the rent even before his dad had gotten sick.
Mibuchi led him inside. A stone-faced doorman sat at the lobby desk. He looked up, once, and gave them a disinterested stare, before returning his attention to the computer screen in front of him. It cast his face in a pale, anemic sort of glow and gleamed off the smooth curve of his shaved head. He nodded to Mibuchi without looking up again and pushed something hidden from Shuuzou’s line of sight by the lip of the desk. At the back of the lobby, an elevator’s door slid open, smooth and soundless on a well-oiled track.
“They’ve been expecting you,” the doorman said. He was still staring at the computer as Shuuzou’s footsteps echoed on the marble floor, as they stepped into the elevator and Mibuchi pressed the button for the top floor. The last thing Shuuzou saw as the door slid shut was the flicker of headlights off the doorman’s scalp as another car pulled into the drive.
---
He rounded on Mibuchi, pulse beating a staccato in his head, his hands balled into fists at his sides. He could feel the blood pounding through his veins, could feel his chest heaving, but he didn’t feel short of breath. He just felt angry, and a little tired.
“Look, why the hell am I even here?” The headache was back. He really, really wanted to hit something, or sleep for a week. At this point, it was the same thing.
“It’s at your grandfather’s request.” He stared stupidly at Mibuchi. His grandfather, who hadn’t spoken to them in years. Ever, as far as Shuuzou was concerned. Some crap about disapproving of his only son’s marriage. The bastard hadn’t even answered Mom’s call when Dad’d had to be hospitalized.
“Bullshit,” he said, when he finally convinced himself that those actually were the words that’d come out of Mibuchi’s mouth. It was hard to be sure with the scream of blood rushing in his ears. “The old man doesn’t want anything to do with us.”
He was raising his fist before he’d even thought about it. The anger burned fresh and acidic, bile on the back of his tongue, all the sheer unbelievable idiocy of the night like salt reopening old wounds.
“Nijimura-san,” a voice cut in smoothly from behind him. He turned.
The man standing there was a full head shorter than him and dressed in an immaculate white kimono with crimson dragons curling up its side, perfectly matched to the red of his hair. He had his arms crossed over his chest and his bangs fell into his eyes, just a little too long and in need of a trim. It should have been – was – a ridiculous picture, stupid and overdone like something out of one of those Heian-period historical re-enactments.
It should have been, but it wasn’t at all. The man’s calm, clear eyes stared piercingly back at Shuuzou with calculating weight. He couldn’t be any older than Shuuzou himself, was more likely a year or two younger, but for a moment, something about that gaze made Shuuzou think of a snake, reptilian and cold. He had the unsettling feeling that he was being sized up and dissected – not to be found wanting, but so the man could take the measure of him and best determine how to put him to use.
The man blinked, and the feeling passed. Shuuzou almost thought he’d imagined it; the red eyes meeting his gaze were still assessing, but they contained a a banked flicker of warmth, nothing like that chill, dispassionate stare.
“I’m afraid you have no choice in this matter,” the man said. The words were delivered with the same clean cut as a knife. “It’s unfortunate that you must be informed this way. However, circumstances require that you take your place as the Rakuzan Syndicate’s heir.”
end, chapter 1